


baby, pull me closer

by INMH



Series: trope-bingo Fanfiction Fills 2018 (1st Half) [19]
Category: The Alienist (TV), The Alienist - Caleb Carr
Genre: Alcohol, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Romance, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-03-29 05:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13919985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Laszlo's been looking after John for a long time.





	baby, pull me closer

**Author's Note:**

> IDK
> 
> I had another prompt to fill and I had the beginnings of a story in my draft.
> 
> It kind of wrote itself at 2AM and it's always a bit surreal when I finish them.

It started with a fall.  
  
They were together, walking down the steps of the Institute; it was mid-winter in New York and everything was encrusted in a thin layer of ice. Laszlo didn’t see John slip, but he did hear the evil sound his body made when it hit the stone stairs.  
  
Laszlo’s heart nearly stopped when John hit the bottom, and heard him wheeze like he’d just been beaten half to death.  
  
“John!”  
  
[---]  
  
Laszlo dragged him back inside, forced him into a chair. “Take your jacket off, your vest too, and unbutton your shirt,” He ordered, pulling off his own jacket so as to move more freely.  
  
John’s back, chest, and abdomen were a mess of bruises and scrapes. He was wheezing, struggling to breathe easily, and the possibilities ( _bruised ribs broken ribs bruised lungs broken bones_ ) made Laszlo nervous.  
  
He prodded around John’s chest and abdomen, feeling for breaks and finding none. Slowly, John’s breathing went back to normal.  
  
“You’re alright,” Laszlo sighed, “You’re alright.”  
  
[---]  
  
John limped a little for the next week, but eventually it went away.  
  
And so Laszlo was surprised when John came to him, rubbing his neck, and said, “My neck’s been hurting. I don’t know if I hit it on the steps, or…” He trailed off awkwardly, and Laszlo didn’t need to hear anymore.  
  
“Come here.”  
  
He gently, cautiously prodded at John’s neck, feeling his spine and dreading the possibility of finding an abnormality, a sign that maybe John had hurt himself in a way that couldn’t be fixed.  
  
But he found nothing.  
  
“I don’t feel anything…” Laszlo remarked, “Perhaps it’s a muscle injury.”  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
“Come to me if it stays, or gets worse.”  
  
“Of course. Thank you, Laszlo.”  
  
[---]  
  
Spinal injuries usually did not end well, and Laszlo felt a small surge of fear at the possibility that John could have one.  
  
He spent the next few days in a state of low-key anxiety, wondering if he had missed something, wondering if John was understating his pain out of stubbornness. Or, if worse, he had some sort of injury that wouldn’t be apparent until he moved the wrong way and something catastrophic happened.  
  
John was his friend, his oldest friend who had been tolerant of many of his eccentricities and peculiarities over the years. Laszlo was strangely terrified of that possibility of losing him, and found himself dipping into the well of ugly feelings that had come when Mary had died.  
  
_I’ll double-check with him tomorrow,_ he told himself. _I’ll be more thorough this time._  
  
[---]  
  
John looked surprised when he brought it up.  
  
“I actually feel better,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.” A pause. “You can check again, though, if you like.”  
  
“I’d like to.”  
  
Laszlo was as thorough as last time, and then some. “You haven’t had any more pain.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“It’s all gone.”  
  
“Yes. It must have been a muscle; I may have slept on it funny.”  
  
Laszlo still checked, discontent with any other explanation until he’d re-examined everything; he even slid a hand under John’s shirt and felt his spine a little further down his back, worried if maybe he’d missed something during his initial search. He couldn’t help but note that despite John’s terrible habits, he was still remarkably fit. John shivered when his fingers brushed over some of the not-quite-healed bruises; Laszlo muttered an apology.  
  
“You’re alright,” He murmured, finally taking his hands away. “I think you’re fine.”  
  
John glanced over his shoulder at Laszlo, and then looked away again.  
  
“Thank you, Laszlo.”  
  
[---]  
  
Eventually, the anxiety bled away.  
  
John was fine. Laszlo had been imagining it, perhaps even overreacting. John said the pain was gone, and there were no abnormalities in his neck or back. He very likely did not have a spinal injury, and he was in no danger.  
  
No more than the usual, anyway.  
  
[---]  
  
When John walked in one day with a black eye, Laszlo started slightly. “What on earth happened to you?”  
  
John sniffed. “Some roundsman was giving one of the Golden Rule boys a hard time. Kid’s a friend of Joseph’s. I may have lost my temper a bit.”  
  
That made sense. John had a soft-spot for young boys, especially the ones who looked or behaved like his younger brother (that being, little hellraisers who had a distinct distaste for authority). Laszlo had known John’s little brother as long as he’d known John- the two had been inseparable as children- and he’d remembered too well how relentlessly miserable John had been after his death.  
  
“Come here.”  
  
Laszlo braced a hand on the side of John’s face, turning his head slightly to examine his eye. He’d taken a good hit, but nothing permanently damaging, from the looks of it.  
  
“Sit down. I’ll get you a cold cloth.”  
  
“Thank you, Laszlo.”  
  
[---]  
  
John’s grandmother died.  
  
Laszlo remembered John’s reaction to his brother’s death, and to Julia’s betrayal, and hoped to head off the inevitable breakdown.  
  
“Come and walk with me, John,” he’d said after the funeral, hoping to distract John, hoping to give him some other emotional outlet than alcohol. There was only so much lecturing John could take from Laszlo, as a rule, but Laszlo was still concerned that he’d one day find John dead in a pool of his own vomit after taking things too far.  
  
John, tight-faced and withdrawn, walked with Laszlo without talking. It wasn’t clear if he was painfully hyperaware of his surroundings, or if maybe he was in a daze. They walked for hours, until the lanterns were being lit, and Laszlo was freezing but he didn’t suggest that they stop.  
  
Eventually, abruptly- it must have been nearing nine o’clock- John came to a stop and leaned against a lantern.  
  
“I don’t feel well.”  
  
Laszlo, quietly relieved, nodded. “Come home with me, then.”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
[---]  
  
When John took his gloves off, Laszlo winced.  
  
“God, John, why didn’t you keep your hands in your pockets?”  
  
Laszlo’s hands were a little pale, but John’s were stark white with little splotches of red- it had been very cold that day, and Laszlo had bundled up, but John had been underdressed- whether he thought he’d be going inside soon after the funeral, or if maybe he simply hadn’t given it that much thought, was unclear- and the effects were apparent on him now.  
  
Laszlo heated some water, brought it into the sitting room and set it on the table. John was shaking now, body having a rough time accustoming itself to the warm after so much cold, and Laszlo took his hands into his own, examining it to make sure there weren’t any advanced signs of frostbite that might require deeper attention. When he was satisfied there wasn’t, he released John’s hands and nodded to the bowl.  
  
“Soak your hands. It will help.”  
  
John nodded absently. “Thank you, Laszlo.”  
  
[---]  
  
Laszlo had seen John fall to pieces only once.  
  
It had been the day after his brother’s funeral, and John had had a few drinks. He had been in a state of… Well, Laszlo considered it denial- he’d been acting far too _normally_ , especially considering his outburst at the funeral where he’d blamed his family and their high-society peers for being so repressed, and for passing that mentality onto his brother so that all that was left for him to cope was drugs and alcohol.  
  
“Are you alright, John?” Laszlo had asked tentatively.  
  
“I’m fine!” John had said. “I’m perfectly fine.” But his face had transformed, going from okay, then to strained, then to sad, and then, finally, John had broken out into heartbroken, gutted sobbing. Laszlo had put a hand on his shoulder, and John had wrapped his arms around him, weeping into his shoulder for the better part of an hour.  
  
Laszlo had not, at that time- nor any time since- seen John come so unglued. Part of it, he suspected, was deliberate: John had been embarrassed by his display, resentful but still a product of the environment he’d so relentlessly criticized, and didn’t want Laszlo to think he was emotional.  
  
Laszlo would rather have thought of him as emotional than repressing himself to the point of madness.  
  
[---]  
  
He couldn’t watch John forever, so naturally the man returned to his usual way of coping with difficult emotions. He showed up on Laszlo’s doorstep a week later, drunk to the moon and back, and mumbling something about his gloves.  
  
_You’ve just now noticed that you’d left your gloves here?_ Laszlo thought, wary of how drunken-John’s mind tended to work, but let him inside anyway so that he could search the sitting room for them. Laszlo winced, watching as John smacked his hip against a table, landed hard on his knee when he got down to search near the floor of the couch. There were people who thought drunkenness was funny; Laszlo had never seen the appeal.  
  
_WHACK._  
  
“ _Damn it!_ ”  
  
Laszlo winced, and leaned down to check John’s head, which he’d just smacked on the table as he’d tried to straighten up. “Careful,” He muttered. “Perhaps you should stay here tonight. I- Just in case you’ve hit your head too hard.” He couldn’t say ‘because you’re drunk’, because John would fight that, assert that he wasn’t.  
  
John straightened stepped forward, engulfed Laszlo in a tight, consuming hug.  
  
“Thank you, Laszlo,” He slurred, squeezing Laszlo tightly and pressing his face into his neck, “Thank you.”  
  
Laszlo froze; John hadn’t really hugged him since his brother’s death, and that had been ten years ago. Then, cautiously, he returned the hug, curling both arms around John’s back and letting his chin rest on his shoulder.  
  
It wasn’t a bad hug.  
  
It was a shame John wasn’t more inclined to them when sober.  
  
“You’re welcome, John.”  
  
[---]  
  
The next morning, John was green as a snake and flinched at the sunlight.  
  
“Turn off the light,” He groaned.  
  
“I’m afraid I lack the ability to turn off the sun.”  
  
“Try.”  
  
Laszlo smirked a little, and then jerked the curtains open a little further. “Stop drinking so heavily and this won’t be a problem.”  
  
John grunted and pulled the sheets awkwardly over his head. He turned, and his back was exposed to Laszlo; the bruises and cuts from his fall down the stairs had healed, and the skin of his back and chest was clean and largely unblemished. For a moment, Laszlo was transfixed with the sight of the muscles shifting under John’s skin as he curled in on himself.  
  
Laszlo stepped forward, lightly tapped John on the back, and then left a glass of water on the nightstand and stepped to the door to let him recover.  
  
“Thank you,” came the muffled moan from beneath the covers.  
  
“You’re welcome.”  
  
This was, Laszlo realized, a well-trod script between them.  
  
[---]  
  
John recovered. He always did, from these episodes, but Laszlo was concerned about the day when he couldn’t.  
  
Still, that too was a well-worn conversation: _You need to stop_ was followed by _Mind your business, Laszlo_ was followed by _You’ve made it my business_ was followed by _I don’t have a problem_ was followed by _Yes you do_ was followed by _I’m a goddamn adult and I’ll do as I please, don’t treat me like a child, Laszlo_ was followed by _Stop acting like one then._  
  
Over and over, round and round again. It never got anywhere, and there were some battles than even Laszlo didn’t have the energy to fight.  
  
Seeing John drunk out of his mind was bad enough; knowing that his more extreme episodes were a result of poor coping skills was worse; but seeing him suffer for it every morning and never learning from it was perhaps worst of all. Laszlo’s instinct was to help: One did not nurture a close friendship with a man for as many years as he had and take pleasure in seeing him half delirious in pain and nausea after far too many drinks.  
  
But he restrained himself.  
  
_He has to learn._  
  
_He’ll thank me later._  
  
[---]  
  
Another night, this time in late May.  
  
John had recovered somewhat from his grandmother’s death- in the sense that the drinking binges had reduced somewhat, and he wasn’t going out to solicit prostitutes _every_ night.  
  
He spent a good deal of time at Laszlo’s house, mostly because Laszlo didn’t forbid it and partly, Laszlo suspected, because he was entirely unaccustomed to living alone, having lived with his grandmother since his brother’s death.  
  
He didn’t mind the company.  
  
He just preferred that John be sober for it.  
  
On this particular night, John showed up at Laszlo’s door, pale and coughing. “Might have overdone it, Laszlo,” he said, leaning against the door heavily. “I feel like I’ve had the stuffing kicked out of me.”  
  
And as he had a thousand times before, Laszlo sighed and said, “Come on in.”  
  
“Thank you, Laszlo.”  
  
This script was getting dull.  
  
[---]  
  
There was something _wrong_ here.  
  
John’s forehead was warm, but the heat seemed to disappear at his touch. Now that he was inside, he didn’t seem to be coughing anymore. And though he was pale and shaking slightly, it didn’t seem to indicate illness- it could be that John was dehydrated, or exhausted.  
  
Or mildly drunk, with some combination of the two.  
  
Which might explain, for instance, why John was leaning into his hand so boldly, almost _nuzzling_ it. Normally he was a more obvious drunk, but now that Laszlo was closer, he could detect the faint scent of whiskey on his breath.  
  
“John,” Laszlo remarked lowly, pulling back and taking his hand with him. John froze; he might be a bit drunk, but evidently he was sober enough to hear and grasp the tone of Laszlo’s voice.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re not really sick, are you, John?”  
  
A beat.  
  
John looked stricken; the shaking came back with a vengeance.  
  
“No, Laszlo, I’m not.”  
  
[---]  
  
Laszlo was stunned.  
  
And slightly frightened.  
  
“Are you drunk?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I smell whiskey.”  
  
“I had a glass before I came here.”  
  
“So you could add to the illusion of illness?”  
  
John didn’t respond to that.  
  
“John,” Laszlo said, slowly, trying not to sound scolding, “This is the sort of behavior I expect from the children at the Institute, not from a grown man. Not from _you._ ”  
  
It was attention-seeking behavior, the sort of thing he would expect from a child who had been ignored by a parent, perhaps in favor of a sibling or a step-parent; Laszlo had seen many children feign illness, or deliberately injure themselves so they could get the attention and sympathy of himself or another member of staff. It said ‘pay attention to me, because I’m not getting enough as it is’.  
  
But John wasn’t a child.  
  
So did it mean the same thing?  
  
_Yes,_ Laszlo thought.  
  
_No,_ Laszlo thought.  
  
_Both,_ Laszlo thought.  
  
[---]  
  
Laszlo sat down beside him.  
  
“John.”  
  
John squeezed his eyes shut and wouldn’t look at him.  
  
“John, look at me. Talk to me.”  
  
Nothing.  
  
“You had to know I’d see through this.”  
  
John’s cheeks colored; he was embarrassed. He’d been caught out and now there was no easy, face-saving way out. But he hadn’t left yet, and that was promising.  
  
“You barely tried to make it convincing. You _had to know_ I’d see through it.”  
  
A wince flashed across John’s face.  
  
“John, _please._ ”  
  
He was clenching his fists on his lap, tight enough for the knuckles to go white.  
  
“What did you want, John? What _do_ you want?”  
  
John made a sound that was mostly a sigh, but also had a little bit of a whimper in it.  
  
“Don’t ask questions you already have an answer for, Laszlo.”  
  
[---]  
  
Once, they’d been at some function or another, mostly high-society types.  
  
There was a couple with a young child, a little girl of maybe four. She had been throwing fits and tantrums whenever her parents had not paid sufficient attention to her or given her what she wanted (there had been sweets at this particular function, and she had known it).  
  
“We do what works for us,” Laszlo had explained quietly to John as they’d watched the child stomp her feet and raise her voice. “This child’s doing what works for her. Her parents have taught her that the way to get what she wants is to misbehave. If they don’t capitulate, she escalates her behavior. And I imagine she’s also learned that this works especially well in public, when they’re prone to be embarrassed and criticized for her behavior.”  
  
“Lucky girl,” John had muttered back, watching as the girl’s father relented and gave her a cookie. “My father would have brought me out back and backhanded me.”  
  
Laszlo had felt a shiver down his back- his father would have done even worse than a back-hand- but nodded.  
  
[---]  
  
Laszlo thought of that conversation now, and felt a very different sort of chill.  
  
“It did something for you,” He said.  
  
John didn’t respond. He still wasn’t looking Laszlo in the eye, but it was obvious he was becoming more distressed with every moment.  
  
_What did he get from it?_  
  
The most blatant, obvious answer came forward, and it brought Laszlo up short. It was the only one he could think of, the only logical explanation for why a man who readily, willfully engaged in the services of prostitutes would feel the need to intentionally provoke a gentle touch by a friend, by someone he knew and had known for ages, in such an intimate manner.  
  
_Don’t ask questions you already have answers for._  
  
“John.”  
  
John’s eyes snapped shut again.  
  
“John, if you wanted something from me, you could have just asked.”  
  
His eyes flew open, and John started laughing. “God, Laszlo, you know me. You know I wasn’t about to do that.”  
  
Laszlo sighed. “Fair enough.”  
  
[---]  
  
“Why did you drink before you came?”  
  
“To work up my nerves.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
Silence.  
  
For once, Laszlo let go. “For God’s sake, John, I spend my days picking apart the minds of men and women who are determined to be as cryptic as possible with me! Can you do me the kindness of not doing the same?”  
  
John groaned and shook his head, letting it fall to rest in his hands. “Oh God, what was I thinking, this was a terrible idea, I shouldn’t have assumed-” He stopped short.  
  
“Assumed what? _Assumed what,_ John?”  
  
“God, Laszlo, you’re killing me!”  
  
An arm slid around Laszlo’s shoulders, another around his ribs, and pulled him in close, hot breath on his ear.  
  
There was silence for a good minute or two. Then Laszlo said,  
  
“If this was what you wanted,” He murmured, fingers curling into John’s shirt, “You only needed to _ask_ , John.”  
  
John laughed, a slightly unhinged sound, and squeezed him tightly.  
  
[---]  
  
They went to bed together.  
  
If you’d told him at the beginning of the day where the two of them would have ended up at the end of it, Laszlo might have had you- or John- committed.  
  
It was all quite surreal, honestly; he liked to think that he wasn’t quite as repressed as John in some respects, and the idea of sharing a bed with a man didn’t violate any deeply ingrained principals in him. And if there were any man he’d trust within the intimacy of a bedroom, it would be John.  
  
_Oh well,_ Laszlo thought, almost dreamily detached from his better sense as he watched John disrobe, _I suppose I’ve made bigger mistakes in my life._  
  
“You like having my hands on you,” he said, lazily admiring the planes of John’s chest.  
  
John snorted. “ _You_ like putting your hands on _me._ How do you think I even got this into my head?”  
  
Laszlo spread his hands in confusion as John pulled up the covers, crawled into the bed beside him. “How else was I supposed to examine you? My touching was strictly for the sake of medical examination.”  
  
John’s arms curled around Laszlo’s chest, and there was something quite satisfying about having him pressed up against him.  
  
“Keep telling yourself that, Laszlo.”  
  
[---]  
  
Laszlo woke up, and his bad arm was aching fiercely.  
  
It had been so long since he’d slept with someone else, he’d forgotten how difficult it could be to find a position that wasn’t hard on his arm, which wasn’t accustomed to being crushed between two people, or awkwardly rolled onto in their sleep.  
  
He had, in reality, dug his own grave with his arm. Had he been more vigorous with it as a child, had he ignored the (considerable) pain and not favored his right arm and hand for everything, the left would likely be stronger and more useful now- maybe not perfect, but better than it was. But then, Laszlo had been a child, and his parents- especially his father- had been insistent that he not draw attention to his deformity.  
  
John was asleep, hadn’t so much as stirred when Laszlo woke, nor did he when Laszlo climbed out of bed and went downstairs.  
  
He had always been careful to avoid using alcohol to self-medicate- John and his brother had been an object-lesson in how badly that could end- but on nights like this Laszlo tended to indulge.  
  
The alcohol was useful to distract and numb the pain, and in moments like these, when the buzz was setting in and the pain was receding, that Laszlo better understood why John overindulged the way he did.  
  
Everything was warm, and Laszlo was tired, and he nodded off.  
   
[---]  
   
“Laszlo?”  
  
Laszlo’s head perked up; John was standing in front of him, brow furrowed. “Hm?”  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
“Hm? I’m- yes, I’m fine.” Laszlo went to straighten up, but winced and hissed slightly when he stretched his bad arm and felt a sharp stab of pain near his elbow. “Just a little stiff.”  
  
“Right.” John sat down beside him, shirt slipping off his shoulder. Laszlo was still drunk enough to not be completely aware, and he stared at that exposed skin without trying to be subtle; it occurred to him that he’d seen John’s chest, but nothing lower than that, and that he may very well be able in the future.  
  
So long as this didn’t all evaporate in the sober light of morning, that was.  
  
Laszlo started slightly when John gently took his bad hand onto his lap, fingers sliding up and down the somewhat withered limb. If he stared, it was only because he wasn’t accustomed to anyone so much as _looking_ at his bad arm without flinching, never mind touching it; everyone seemed to treat it as though it were diseased, contagious, that their arms would wither if they so much as laid eyes on his.  
  
If John was bothered, he hid it well.  
  
But then, he’d known about Laszlo’s arm for years. It was different for him.  
  
And Laszlo liked that.  
  
He smiled gently, skin tingling where John’s fingers brushed. The pressure was gentle, and maybe it was simply the psychological effect combined with the alcohol, but it actually felt _good._  
  
“Thank you, John.”  
  
John’s lips twitched.  
  
“Not a problem, Laszlo.”  
   
-End


End file.
